easy cooking

So, I was going to write a kind of house buying/selling update today, but the long and short of it is that we haven’t sold our house yet and once we do we don’t know where we are going. We have tons of interest on our house, usually showings every day and sometimes multiple times per day, and I swear I’m setting a new world record for how much restaurant food someone who loves to cook can eat in one month.

So. We tried hard to start cooking more after the first few weeks of showings. The deal is that it’s hard to start cooking anything because if we get a call for a showing we have to immediately leave + make the place look amazing. So, it was/is easier to buy food and never have any dishes.

When I do cook, I’m careful to only do one-pot kinds of things or something I can make in advance, then hide in the microwave, fridge, or oven (off) until we get back from hiding out for dinner or whatever meal I’ve cooked for. Quick + not many meals are the name of our game, plus a few ingredient-types of things like extra chopped veggies or cooked quinoa or pasta in the fridge that can be added to other stuff.

I thought about calling this New Mom Broccoli Cheddar Soup, but that seemed….I don’t know, people need quick-cooking food whether or not they have kids, right?

This, I have to say, is one of the more inspired things I’ve done recently in a recipe. Jay is all about the chopped salads, as you know, and is always buying these random bags of pre-chopped veggies but then we never quiiiite eat them in time. I hate throwing away food, and this bag of broccoli slaw was looking really sad to me a few weeks ago, so I made it into soup. The thing is, though, is that since the broccoli is pre-chopped there is no blender involved, we just end up with a really legit texture to our soup. AND there are carrots in the mixture which add some nice flavor and color to the whole shtick.

You do have to chop an onion and garlic but…you could totally skip those two ingredients and just use the broccoli, I won’t tell anyone.

Oh, HERE we go. Your new favorite healthy chicken soup for the cold months. With flavor out the ying yang.

Last year around this time our neighbors Scott and Belen were bringing home their brand new baby boy from the hospital (happy birthday Teo!), and Belen’s mom, Lydia, was here for several weeks to help with baby and get to know her grandson.

She also cooked. The woman cooked a lot. Since there were only three of them in the house Jay and I were the lucky recipients of SO MUCH authentic Mexican food this time last year, and it never lasted in our fridge very long – my dad actually just asked about Lydia and her salsa the other day! This soup was one of the things that Belen and her mom made while Lydia was here and brought to us on a particularly cold day. Scott and Belen and Teo have since moved back West and we miss them terribly, but LUCKILY I have texts upon texts of Mexican cooking tips and tricks, including THIS recipe, which I am now sharing with you and insisting that you learn to make this very instant.

It’s cool – the chicken is cooked in water, and that’s the soup. Then you make rice separately, stir in chipotle peppers for flavor, add a bunch of raw fresh stuff, and end up with one of the most flavorful dinners of your damn life. The combo of heavily cooked chicken and rice with the hyper-fresh toppings and garnishes is hugely appealing, and I just can’t stop won’t stop with this stuff. Also. It’s dairy and gluten free if you care. Or you could add tortilla strips and cheese and make it dairy and gluten-full? Maybe that’s the direction we should go.

And every week until it gets warm again because 1. it’s easy, 2. it’s delicious, and 3. cheese.

This was actually inspired by my friend Nathan, who sent me a message one morning and was all “do you have a recipe for chicken chowder?” and I was all “I didn’t know that was a thing.” And then I proceeded to rattle off what I WOULD do if I was making chicken chowder in a slow cooker, had I known that was a thing.

And then I thought about it all week and MADE IT and it turned out way better than I ever could have expected. I just kind of went with a standard broth-based-but-with-dairy version of chowder with chicken instead of any kind of seafood. I used SUPER simple ingredients because this time of year I feel like the fancy stuff has to be reserved for parties and gifts and holidays, and the rest of the time you really need simple things that are balanced and comforting and EASY.

Well, a few things have happened. First, in that post we only talk about shrimp, and there are SO many other things that can be hibachied. Also. Shrimp sauce. White sauce. But it’s pink? People love it, and we should all know how to make our own. Because THEN you can make, like, a hibachi FEAST.

Not just hibachi shrimp, not that there’s a thing wrong with that.

The other reason that I really wanted to redo this “recipe” (more of a method) is that a few folks have told me that something that makes hibachi taste like hibachi is a little citrus with the soy flavoring. So, this time I added some citrus to my seasonings. It is super delish, but I also like the plain soy method. Citrus or no is totally up to you.